The phrase ‘if these walls could talk’ feels like it could have been coined with Number 41, Carlton Hill in mind. This beautiful period home — for sale through Aston Chase at £4.25 million — sits on one of the most sought-after streets in St John’s Wood, and was for years the London home of Eric Idle, the actor, writer, musician and comedian who was one of the founding members of Monty Python.
Idle is one of the rare creatures able to pull off the trick of being both naturally funny and musically gifted (see also: Victoria Wood, Dudley Moore and Hugh Laurie), and it’s hard not to wonder if he sat in this very kitchen while first humming the tune for Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the unforgettable, blackly-comic song at the end of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Idle, incidentally, is credited with coming up with the idea for the film: the story goes that a journalist kept badgering him about the Pythons’ third movie, a film which the group hadn’t even thought about yet. He flippantly replied that it would be called Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory — and from that seed, the iconic parallel life fable emerged.
Eric Idle (left) and Graham Chapman (right) in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979).
(Image credit: Allstar Picture Library / Alamy)
Life of Brian came out in 1979, a time when the Pythons were at the height of their fame — and Idle often hosted A-list friends at his St John’s Wood pads (he owned two houses on the street), from the cast of Star Wars (a story Idle told on television in 2018) to The Rolling Stones.
Some of those friends stayed even longer. Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, rented the house for a few months in 1979 while she was in London filming The Empire Strikes Back at Elstree Studios, and Idle was away making Life of Brian. Her co-star (and one-time lover) Harrison Ford himself rented the house a couple of years later, while shooting the studio scenes for Raiders of the Lost Ark, also up at Elstree.
Eric Idle and Carrie Fisher at a party at 90 Park Lane, a restaurant in London, in January 1982.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The home itself is a classic London townhouse, with a façade of white stucco and brick, with elegant sash windows and fine proportions.
(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
Inside, it’s deceptively large, set over four floors — with the main living space being the 30ft kitchen-dining-family room space on the garden floor, which opens out through a garden room to the outside space.
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(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
The first floor is almost entirely taken up by a huge drawing room, which has a terrace at one end, though there’s also a separate study at the back of the house.
(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
The four bedrooms are split across the first and second floors — though no evenly. The first floor is entirely taken up by the principal bedrooms, with its dressing room and huge en-suite bathroom. All three remaining bedrooms are above, as is a smaller bathroom.
(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
There’s also a surprise lurking at the base of the house: the lower ground floor has been set up as a space that’s ideal for any successful actor: it’s a gym by day, and a home cinema by night. What more could any iconic movie star wish for?
(Image credit: Aston Chase / Supplied by the agent)
The house on Carlton Hill, St John’s Wood, London is for sale through Aston Chase — see more details.